


an aura of violence

by yavanei



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brief Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, F/M, what would buckynat be without bucky worshiping at nat's altar tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 22:18:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2445143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yavanei/pseuds/yavanei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She carries knives differently than he does. He’s always considered the knife less a tool, more an extension of himself. When you’re a weapon, the tools you use become part of you. Some things don’t change, <i>can’t</i> change, even after the programming is gone. When she holds a knife, there’s an awareness there that he wishes he could learn. It’s so ingrained in him that sometimes he doesn’t think twice – the knife is him, he is the knife. </p><p>But her? No. She knows. She knows the difference. There is her. And then there is the knife.<br/>And he’s not sure which is more terrifying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an aura of violence

She finds him in a back alley. She finds him at the corner store buying cheap liquor. She finds him sitting on a bar stool in a dusty, dirty dive bar at the end of the street.

Does she find him? Or does he find her? The universe has a funny way of aligning just right where they’re concerned.

There’s jagged glass, splintered pool cues, overturned chairs, and bodies. There are always bodies where he’s concerned. She bends down, checks two pulses. Not dead. They’re all unconscious.

His knuckles are caked in blood and he is laughing like some kind of wild beast, head buried in a glass of scotch he knows by now has no affect on him. He slams the tumbler down so hard a crack spikes up the side of the glass. He reaches over the counter, grabs a full bottle of Everclear, and throws it back as if each drop might get him closer to some semblance of inner peace… or perhaps total annihilation.

The Winter Soldier, they call him. Natasha thinks he’s more a lost soldier who would rather scrape his own heart out and chip away at pieces of his dwindling pride and dignity by lashing out at men in rundown and battered bars. He would rather do that than ever admit he’s a dying fire with lungs that have breathed cold air in one too many times.

It’s a wonder they ever tamed him at all. (But if he’s here now, it means they never really did.)

He eyes her, then, lips curving into a feral grin. Her name spills from his mouth, over, and over, and over.

Only it’s not her name.

It’s the one from before.

He stumbles from the chair, and falls to his knees in front of her, helplessness plain on his face and agony clear in his eyes. His hands wrap around her waist and he’s saying her name over and over and he’s begging for an end, he’s begging for death, for life, he’s begging for _absolution._

He’s begging her to put a gun in his mouth and end it all.

This isn’t right, she thinks. Running is all she’s ever known.

Run, Natalia.

Run, Natalie.

Run, Natasha.

Run. Run. Run. And never stop running. Shed your skin, slip into a new body. Become someone new. Reinvent. Escape. Start over. Run until you can run no more. Survive. Survive. Eat yourself alive if you must, but do not let them catch you; do not let them make you into something you are not.

This isn’t right, she thinks. No one should ask to die.

He’s clinging to her like she’s salvation, head bowed in prayer and utterances of half-remembered sins spilling from his lips.

“Let me tell you all the horrible things I’ve done, Natalia.”

And so he does.

In 1955 he blows up a United Nations Diplomatic Negotiation team, slaughtering seven representatives.

In 1960 he teaches other men to torture and trains them to kill like him. They aren’t as good, but they do well enough. No one is as good as him.

In 1968 he makes a mistake. He’s sent to terminate a scientist. His wife wasn’t supposed to be there.

In 1991 he fakes a car accident. Howard and Maria Stark are pronounced dead.

In 2009 he assassinates an engineer, shooting him straight through a woman.

His hands slide her shirt up and his mouth, wet with liquor, brush over the scar and he cries into her skin – another transgression he must atone for.

In 2014 he nearly murders his best friend.

Her hands rest atop his head, and he trembles against her body, saying he’s sorry, he’s sorry, he’s so… so sorry, and he’s trying to make it better, but he doesn’t know if he ever truly can.

She can taste his despair all the way down to her insides. She closes her eyes.

He takes out a gun. He takes out a gun and places it directly in her hand.

“Steve should have killed me,” he says.

Natasha’s fingers instinctively tighten around the grip, and he keeps begging into her skin – end me. End me. End me. End it. End it. (He doesn’t say: because I’m too much of a coward to do it myself.)

Natasha says nothing, simply unloads the gun. She presses in on the release and removes the magazine, and pulls the slide back to check the chamber. A round ejects, and plinks against the floor. She locks the slide to the rear, and does another visual and physical check of the chamber, just to be sure.

She drops to her knees, his arms still hang around her waist, and lets the gun and magazine clatter to the floor next to her. She pulls him into a tight embrace, holding him against her.

“You foolish, stupid man,” she says. “Is what they did to you not enough already?”

He doesn’t respond, but she feels him nuzzle into her neck, and his breathing softens.

He never does this again. He breaks down once. He breaks down once and he lets her see. He breaks down once and he asks her to end it.

Only once.

Because he knows, he knows just like she knows that the only way to move is to run, run, run, and keep running to a better tomorrow.

* * *

He finds her in a back alley. He finds her at a restaurant buying takeout for one. He finds her in an apartment in little Ukraine.

Does he find her? Or does she find him? The universe has a funny way of aligning just right where they’re concerned.

There’s an epidermal tracker embedded in her shoulder, and she slips one black strap from her shoulder.

She was working a job, freelance, she says, and her employers (well, the people who _thought_ they were her employers, anyway) were the controlling, paranoid type – as they often always are. Sometimes you have to play ball if you want to win.

"Dig it out, James."

"A scalpel would be better," he says. "Let me get the first aid kit."

But she reaches behind her and grabs a fistful of his shirt. “I’m tired. Just get it done.”

He doesn’t protest again. He slides out his knife from the sheath at his belt, and she grips the white hardwood of the windowsill, bowing her head. Her bangs fall over her eyes and a small gasp escapes parted lips when the blade cuts into her skin.

He makes one deep incision into her flesh, and sets the bloody knife on the sill.

He brings his metal hand to her neck, and tenderly rubs at the tense skin there as his index finger digs into the wound, loosing the tracker and sliding it out.

"Now, will you let me get the first aid kit?" he breathes the question, quietly, placing a gentle kiss just above the place on her shoulder.

"Knock yourself out," she chuckles.

She undresses in front of the window, black silk pooling around her high heels. Two bracelets slip from her wrists. Two bracelets. What a charming euphemism. The truth is, two _murder weapons_ slip from her wrists.

He washes her blood from his hands in the sink, cleans up the blood around her shoulder with a wet rag, sterilizes her wound, and bandages it in the dim light of their bedroom.

She’s down to her bra, fishnet stockings and garter, and doesn’t say a word. She simply hums a low, gentle, tune in mild approval as she feels his calloused fingers work across her flesh.

There’s something they don’t tell you. Something no amount of therapy, or group counseling, or any amount of medication could possibly explain in a way that would make any sense. Survival hurts. Freedom hurts. Freedom for them meant choice. But what hurts the most is how debilitating and aimless freedom can be, what hurts is how no matter how many atrocities and devastations they survive… it never gets any easier. He hopes for a better tomorrow. He hopes for a better today. But sometimes he feels like change – real, honest to god, _change_ – is nothing but an illusion.

Sometimes she bruises and breaks, just like he does, and there are nights he sees fragments of the other side – all the dark things she says she does not regret, but will never speak of.

_My past is my own, and no one will ever know my full story. Not even you, James._

She doesn’t ask to die, not like he did.

But when memories from what seems like a lifetime ago come, she is retching up her demons in the bathroom, hands clammy against the tile, and he’s there for her – just like she is for him. He doesn’t ask any questions.

There’s a knife on the windowsill covered with her blood. There’s a knife on the windowsill tainted with the ghosts of a hundred men he’s slain. There’s a knife on the windowsill and it’s in her hand.

She crawls on top of him in bed, eyes weary and wild, as she pulls the sheets away from his body.

She carries knives differently than he does. He’s always considered the knife less a tool, more an extension of himself. When you’re a weapon, the tools you use become part of you. Some things don’t change, _can’t_ change, even after the programming is gone.

When she holds a knife, there’s an awareness there that he wishes he could learn. It’s so ingrained in him that sometimes he doesn’t think twice – the knife is him, he is the knife.

But her? No. She knows. She knows the difference. There is her. And then there is the knife.

And he’s not sure which is more terrifying.

_Wolves and girls. Both have sharp teeth._

Her hand is trailing over his bare stomach, and he tenses, hard muscle straining beneath her touch. He wets his lips with a hastily applied tongue.

There’s a knife in her hand that is stained with her dried blood and she’s pressing the cold metal to his cheek. There’s a knife in her hand that belongs to him and she’s dragging the edge of it down the angle of his jaw.

He hisses, sucking in a breath through clenched teeth, when the edge clips just a little too close for comfort.

Will she cut him? Would he care? (No. No.)

His fingers pulse around her thighs, nails digging into the little criss-cross gaps of her fishnet stockings so he can feel her flesh.

There’s venom pulsing in her veins and he wants to get drunk on it in a way he can’t otherwise, wants, wants… _wants…_

"Natalia," is what he moans.

Debase me. Defile me. Do whatever you _want_ , is what he thinks.

He has to confess something – something he'll never say out loud, but something he’s sure she must know, because she knows him like the back of her hand. (She probably knows him better than he knows himself if he’s being honest.)

She is the very essence of resolve and control and pragmatism, all of these things laced up flawlessly. She’s the one who stops him when he’s just about to make a rash decision, and he wishes he could stitch himself together the way she has. But it’s so hard. It’s so hard when he doesn’t know where all his pieces fit.

But there are nights she undoes the lace, lets it tumble off her shoulders and lets herself fall from grace and elegance and all restraint.

There are nights when she curls her mouth into something resembling a snarl and a halfway smile, lipstick smudged red, mascara smeared in all the wrong places, and – _jesus christ_ – he has to confess he thinks she’s an unparalleled one woman catastrophe.

She’s dragging the edge of his Mark II down to the very pulse of his neck, and he stills beneath her, anticipation threatening to ruin him. His chest rises and falls, hard and fast, and the room would be completely silent if not for his heart thrumming like a train wreck waiting to happen in his eardrums.

Will she cut him? Does he want her to? (Maybe. _Yes_.)

“Natalia,” he says it again, his voice dropping several decibels.

“James,” she whispers back, and –

Just her voice alone causes a shiver of animal pleasure to run up his spine. She drags her free hand to a hairpin, and crimson colored curls bounce free, framing her face.

There’s a streetlamp outside, and the fading light of it is pouring in through the window, echoing off the shadows on her skin, the angle of her body bent over him.

You know how people always compare the ones they love to the sun? They say they revolve and spiral around them?

That's not how it works. Not for people like them. They don’t revolve around each other, they _crash_ , they _explode_. She's not the sun. She’s not perfection. She's an earthquake, a black hole, a sudden burst of energy and waves so powerful they can topple worlds, tear the very fabric of space itself. She’s seen regimes rise and fall, and has walked away unscathed. She’s softness and hard edges all at once, all together. She knows exactly who she is, and she makes no apologies for it.

She smiles at him, lips curving into something he can’t even begin to describe – he feels like time should be standing still when she looks at him like that, eyes wide, a happy, youthful expression on her face, but time doesn’t stand still. It compresses. Her mouth on his mouth tastes like turbulence and destruction, vibrant and kind and _alive_ and suddenly his skin is fracturing like broken stones and light is searing his retinas and consummately blinding him.

She bites into his shoulder, sinks her teeth around his neck, and he’s positive he’s never felt more aware than in this singular moment.

He wonders if she's ever shown anyone else this side. (He selfishly hopes she hasn’t. Maybe that’s wrong, but he never claimed to be perfect either.)

In the morning, she stretches, bones cracking, a loud yawn falling from her mouth. She rolls over on top of him, tugging the sheets from his body as she often does to wake him up. He groans, hands clawing at air, half-asleep as he tries to tug them back. When she starts peppering noisy kisses over his cheek and down his neck, he begrudgingly opens his eyes, peering down at her.

She pops her head up, and rests her chin against his, laughing in that total, genuine, no-holds-barred way he adores, and he laughs too.

_"You’re a good man."_

She said this to him once.

And it’s not that he doesn’t believe her, it’s that she’s the only one who is capable of seeing him for what he really is.

That’s what separates them from other people.

They speak a language not many around them will ever speak, or even hope to comprehend. When they go to sleep at night, they know down to the deepest parts of their souls… they know exactly who is lying beside them.

There’s a knife on the nightstand covered with her blood. There’s a knife on the nightstand tainted with the ghosts of a hundred men he’s slain. There’s a knife on the nightstand and it’s in his hand.

And he’s washing it clean.


End file.
